It is odd that the researchers had to go to a biology journal to get it published, when there are several high-quality psychology of religion journals out there. Not really an important point, just something to note.

Before anyone gets too excited about the findings, look at the statistics. This is why I tell my students that it’s important to read the methods and results in research write-ups. It may be the boring technical bits, but that’s where the quality of a study stands or falls. The standardized coefficient reported by the researchers was -0.132, which represents only a small effect size. Put another way, the coefficient represents the change in one variable (stickers given to another kid) associated with changes in the other variables (religious vs nonreligious household). Children were given 30 stickers and given an opportunity to share. The difference between the average sticker sharing among the religious kids and the average sticker sharing among the irreligious kids was ONLY 13% of one sticker.

The way that the researchers measured religiosity annoys me. They operationalized their variable by a simple religious/nonreligious dichotomy, which is the crudest and least sophisticated possible way to do it. Given the easy availability of a wide range of complex multidimensional religiosity measures, speaking as someone who has done psychology of religion research, I am professionally annoyed at such a blunt analytic approach. The website where I first saw this was a Doctor Who site (yes, I know the story is not about Doctor Who. There is some off-topic discussion going on at that website). I explained the problem to them this way: Suppose someone wanted to study Doctor Who fandom, but they measured it by asking participants “Have you ever seen an episode of Doctor Who?”, and calling everyone who said “yes” a Doctor Who fan. Would any actual Doctor Who fan have any respect at all for a study like that?

Another thing to watch out for is big sweeping conclusions based on data that do not actually support such statements. Looking at the crudity of their measure and the small effect size that they detected, a proper conclusion would be very modestly stated, with a lot of acknowledgements of the limitations of the study. If you click on the link in the story and get the pdf of the study, looking at the conclusions they draw, there is none of that. There is no modesty in their discussion, and they close with a claim that this study shows that secularization makes the world more moral. Talk about overstating one’s case!

Leaving aside the methodological problems noted above, the connection between religiosity and morality is complex and needs a lot more development. To begin with, the results of psychology of religion studies vary widely depending on how researchers define religion. Studies in which the researchers measure religion by asking questions like “how often do you attend religious services?” produce very different results than studies in which religiosity is measured in terms of agreement with theological teachings, and those studies produce different results than studies in which the researchers are looking at religious maturity, or religious motivation, and so on.

It also matters how morality is being measured. Studies that measure morality by assessing endorsement of moral values tend to show that religiosity is strongly predictive of more moral beliefs. Some aspects of religiosity predict more mature and complex moral reasoning while other aspects do not. Generally speaking (there are exceptions), religiosity does not predict more moral behaviour when believers are “in the heat of the moment” (e.g., giving someone an opportunity to cheat on a test), but it does predict more moral behaviour when believers have time to plan for it (e.g., higher religiosity scores predict more volunteerism). Religiosity predicts higher levels of morally-relevant traits such as self-control, gratitude, and forgiveness.

And even then, that’s the simplified version. It all gets complicated very quickly.

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I was also wondering about the exact wording of what they said to the children… I couldn’t seem to figure that out from the available write up…. For example, did they say “You can get 10 of the best stickers, or you can choose to let other kids have some.” Or did they say “Choose your favorite stickers, and then the other kids will get the rest.” This would make a difference to my child. He is a stickler for following directions, and if they worded it “choose your favorite stickers” he would feel that he needed to follow those instructions, or he would be being dishonest. It might be that this study merely shows that kids from religious backgrounds tend to follow authority more closely, etc.